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The Holy Grail of Pizza Boxes

Everyone has an opinion about which pizzeria is best in town, but only one person can tell you which pizza box is the best in the world: Scott Wiener, the Guinness World Record holder for the world’s largest pizza box collection.

A self-described pizza enthusiast and the proprietor of Manhattan’s sole pizzeria tour, Scott’s Pizza Tours, Wiener, 32, has amassed a collection of more than 600 pizza boxes from at least 45 countries -- all of which he stores in a single closet inside his Brooklyn apartment.

But Wiener isn’t a hoarder; he’s a pizza box expert. There’s a difference (he has even published a book about pizza box art) and that difference entails vital knowledge.

According to Wiener, almost two-thirds of the pizzas eaten in the United States are placed in delivery boxes. To put that into perspective, “that’s, like, 2.1 billions pizza boxes a year eaten out of pizza boxes,” said Wiener.

The problem with pizza delivery boxes, though, is that they’re not effective at delivering pizza. Fresh pizzas emit steam that gets trapped inside cardboard pizza box. This leads to “soggyfication” -- a term Wiener coined that denotes a pizza’s loss of taste, crunch and structural integrity.

The whole dilemma is not unlike Global Warming, with pizza serving as the Earth in this metaphor and pizza boxes as the Greenhouse gases inside our atmosphere. Wiener is so apprehensive about “soggyfication” (pizza’s Greenhouse Effect) that he refuses to eat pizza from a pizza box.

But he’s also civic-minded. After a protracted global search, Wiener said he has found a pizza box that addresses other boxes’ failings. Straight out of India, it’s called the Ventit, and according to Wiener, it helps preserve a pizza’s taste and crunch.

How? Watch the video above and discover what could quite possibly be the world’s most advanced pizza box.